Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg is the 27-year-old billionaire responsible for the creation of Facebook, which has become one of the most trafficked and well-known sites on the internet. You know it well, and you probably have your Facebook account open in another window as you read this. Admit it -- we do.

Appeal

Mark Zuckerberg may possess the looks of a typical computer nerd, but it’s fairly clear that his incredible success has transformed him into a sex symbol among his female fans. Unfortunately for said followers, Mark Zuckerberg has been seriously dating his girlfriend Priscilla Chan for quite some time now -- with their relationship making news thanks to the pair’s decision to define their coupling with a series of rules. According to a book by Sarah Lacy, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan created a contract designed to cover many of the aspects within their relationship -- including how often Chan would be able to spend time with her predictably busy boyfriend. One of the rules outlined by Sarah Lacy states, “One date per week, a minimum of a hundred minutes of alone time, not in his apartment, and definitely not at Facebook.“

Success

Though he had always had an interest in computer programming, Mark Zuckerberg could never have anticipated the day would come where he’d be labeled the next Bill Gates. After spending his adolescence creating fun little programs, Mark Zuckerberg moved into the big leagues with his creation of Facebook, which became an instant success among his fellow Harvard students and quickly morphed into the social networking site we know today. It’s consequently not surprising to note that Forbes once called Mark Zuckerberg “the youngest billionaire on earth, and possibly the youngest self-made billionaire ever.“

Mark Zuckerberg Biography

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984, in White Plains, New York. It’s certainly not surprising to note that Mark Zuckerberg developed an interest in computers at an early age. He began teaching himself how to code before he had entered the sixth grade. After creating small games for his own amusement, Mark Zuckerberg moved on to far more complex endeavors, including a computerized version of the popular board game "Risk." Zuckerberg’s technical prowess and know-how only increased as he entered high school, and it was his work on a plug-in for the Winamp MP3 player that eventually caught the interest of AOL and Microsoft.

Rather than become just another cog in the corporate machine, Mark Zuckerberg chose to create his own path by furthering his education at Harvard University. His first venture into the online world was a primitive website entitled Facemash, which essentially allowed his fellow students to compare their looks with those of the site’s visitors. Not surprisingly, Harvard was less than thrilled with the site’s modus operandi, and quickly shut down both the site and Mark Zuckerberg’s internet connection. Yet the seed had been planted within Mark Zuckerberg for the site that would eventually transform the fledgling programmer into the youngest billionaire on the planet.

mark zuckerberg creates facebook

Shortly after the Facemash incident, Mark Zuckerberg began working on a new site that would afford the students at Harvard the opportunity to contact one another via an online website. Entitled The Facebook, the site launched from his dorm room on February 15, 2004, and quickly became the talk of the campus -- with more than half of Harvard’s students signing up for the service within two weeks. The burgeoning popularity of the site convinced Mark Zuckerberg -- now armed with the help of his roommate, Dustin Moskovitz -- to expand the site to other schools, including Yale, Columbia and Stanford.

Later that same year, Mark Zuckerberg opened The Facebook up to schools across the United States and Canada, which eventually allowed the mogul-in-training to drop out of Harvard and move the site’s base of operations to Palo Alto, California in June 2004. An influx of investors allowed Zuckerberg to devote all of his time and energy to the skyrocketing social-networking site, with the decision to change the name from The Facebook to just Facebook necessitated by the $200,000 purchase of the Facebook.com domain.

mark zuckerberg’s facebook goes global

In September 2005, Mark Zuckerberg launched a high school version of Facebook -- though it wasn’t until the following year that anyone with a valid email address was finally allowed to access the site. Though he’s had plenty of opportunities to sell the site for ridiculous sums of money (Yahoo! famously offered to buy Facebook for a stunning $1 billion), Mark Zuckerberg has bucked all industry expectations and insisted that Facebook is better off on its own. As he has said, “As a company we're very focused on what we're building and not as focused on the exit. We just believe that we're adding a certain amount of value to people's lives if we build a very good product.”

Although word got out that, in 2009, Mark Zuckerberg's net worth had dropped below $1 billion, his non-billionaire status wasn't going to last. Now that "Facebook me!" and "friend me!" are expressions used in day-to-day life, we're positive Facebook isn't going anywhere. We have Mark to thank for the many hours we've neglected to spend in the 3D universe, but on the other hand, how boring would work be without a little Facebook time-out?

Mark Zuckerberg On Saturday Night Live

This year, Mark Zuckerberg showed he has a sense of humor by appearing beside his on-screen alter ego, Jesse Eisenberg, on a January episode of SNL. Sure, he was still somewhat uneasy, but it showed he can take a joke, even if that "joke" happens to beThe Social Network, David Fincher’s movie that portrays Zuckerberg as a semi-autistic sociopath. Despite all this, Zuckerberg and Facebook have made the world a better place. All you have to do is look to the revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Libya to see that. Sure, Facebook has great new additions as of late, like the Timeline, the real-time ticker, and the ability to watch TV and movies, listen to music and read news with your friends, but its true greatness comes from its ability to bring the world together (and, of course, waste a little time at work).